toolsmith

toolsmith /n./ The software equivalent of a tool-and-die
specialist; one who specializes in making the tools with which
other programmers create applications. Many hackers consider this
more fun than applications per se; to understand why, see
uninteresting. Jon Bentley, in the "Bumper-Sticker Computer
Science" chapter of his book "More Programming Pearls",
quotes Dick Sites from DEC as saying "I'd rather write programs to
write programs than write programs".